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"The trouble with too much genre SF is that it's so obviously the product of the conscious mind."
- William Gibson
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| PyrE | ||
| A thermonuclear explosive that is detonated by thought alone. |
One of the major themes of this book is the primacy of the individual, as opposed to the society. Individual responsibility becomes more important when an explosive is created that can be detonated by thought.
| Like widening rings in a pond, the Will and the Idea spread, searching out, touching and tripping the delicate subatomic trigger of PyrE. The thought found particles, dust, smoke, vapor, motes, molecules. The Will and the Idea transformed them all. In Sicily… the residues and precipitates had been dumped down a drain which led to the sea. For many months the Mediterranean currents had drifted these residues across the sea bottom. In an instant a hump-backed mound of water towering fifty feet high traced the courses, northeast to Sardinia and southwest to Tripoli. |
| Technovelgy from The Stars My Destination,
by Alfred Bester. Published by Berkley in 1956 Additional resources -
|
Another class-leveling invention in this novel is the discovery of jaunting.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Stars My Destination
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Tech news articles related to The Stars My Destination
Tech news articles related to works by Alfred Bester
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| MXenes - Atomic-Thin Metal Sheets Now Easier To Make |
| Do We Still Need Orbiting Factories? |
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
